This blog is a great opportunity to share ideas about ways to
transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
talents, passions and dreams. Be great to hear from anyone out there! Feel free to add a comment to Bruce's Blog and enter e-mail to receive postings

Friday, June 06, 2014

Allan Alach, the regular compiler of Educational
Readings, is away holidaying in the UK and Europe for a few weeks so I have put
together this weeks reading. Alan does a great job searching out readings
either supporting a progressive point of view or critiquing the current
neo-liberal ideology that has infected Western Education.

I wish Allan a great holiday but thankfully when
he gets sorted he will continue his contributions.

The next few months in New Zealand will be very
important with the election looming. If the current government is returned then
the neo-liberal agenda will be fully implemented leading New Zealand further
down the path to privatization.

Before leaving Allan send me the
link below to Pat Newman ( President of the Tai Tokerou Principals)
opinion piece in the latest Education Review. Pat writes about the negative scenario that will result
if National’s latest populist panacea of
providing considerable money to appoint 'super' principals and 'super' teachers to ensure
schools comply to government National Standards is put in placeRead what Pat has
to say (he is one principal who is not afraid to confront the government
neo-liberal policies).Then read the following comment by Tom Parsons (Secondary
Principals Association president). Parsons writes that Pat is scaremongering
and that ‘we’ should see the positive in the 'super' principal /teacher idea. He sees
the idea as the best thing since the 1877 Education Act! He must be joking?I am with Pat!

To implement real educational
reform we need to figure out what sort of world we want, writes John Abbot the
director of the 21st Century Learning Imitative. Do we want citizens
who thrive on interdependence and community or a world run by self-centered individuals?
Read and find out.

As schools are becoming test
focused it is enlightening to read of schools that are

Moving away from testing

gaining student success
without recourse to standardized testing
by moving towards performance based assessment. Take a look at the short videos
embedded in the article. Once again creative New Zealand teachers will feel in
good company.

Jerome Bruner is a favourite
educator of mine. He wisely has written that ‘students

Jerome Bruner

get better at what they get good at' and ‘teaching is the canny art of
intellectual temptation’. In this piece he talks about the
hard work behind creative insight. This link takes to a great Edu- blog.

There are those who think learning is a simple
linear staircase process (and thus able to be determined by adults) but this
article explains that education is more a process of moving backwards and
forwards like overlapping waves. Slipping back

is a normal part of learning
writes Robert Siegler Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Carnegie Mellon
University.

Do we need to
do new things in a new way writes blogger Bill Ferriter? Another great blog site.

It’s is not just new technology that counts it is
the pedagogy behind their use. New digital tools used wisely do develop more
efficient and effective learners. In my experience the technology available in
many classes (at great expense) is poorly used.

Humans
are born with an innate default need to learn so with this in mind it is ironic
that schools have problem motivating their ‘natural born learners. This link
provides teachers with some practical answers – and also, ironically, answers
that once were the grist for creative teaches and are now risk of being lost
with the government

One of my oldies but goodies -
there are well over a thousand postings on my blog and the blog data show which
ones are being read each hour, day, week, month , year and all time. It is ones
that turn up that I have all but forgotten these that I send to Allan to add to
the readings.

Time for a national conversation about education?

This blog written in 2005, with
the election looming seems as relevant as ever.

As does this blog based on a book by Lester
Thurow about the world at a 'turning point'.

There are a lot of inter-related forces that are leading to a major turning point in
human civilisation that will create change whether we like it or not.
Unfortunately politicians, with the exception of those who understand the need
for sustainability, with their short term election focus fail to see, or choose
to ignore. Lester Thurow writes, ‘we need a new game, new rules and new strategies. We are still
awaiting the turning point be wrote of in his book but change is inevitable
whether we like it or not.